Longshots, Favorites & American Politics

Today marks the 134th running of the Preakness Stakes. For those not familiar with horse racing, the Preakness is the big race after the Kentucky Derby and before the Belmont Stakes. If a horse wins all 3 in one year they have won the Triple Crown, a feat that hasn't been accomplished since Affirmed did it in 1978.

What does this have to do with politics, you ask? Well, a lot. This year's Derby winner was a 50-1 longshot called Mine That Bird. "Going into that race, just looking on paper, I don't understand why he wasn't 100-to-1," said Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens, "It just shows you that good horses can come from anywhere." The same can be said of good political leaders.

As we have seen this past week our current leaders, the favorites if you will, are having trouble staying on track:

President Obama has changed course twice in a week. First he decided to block the release of alleged detainee abuse photos after he had said he would not. And second he is reviving the Bush-era military tribunals which he strongly campaigned against in 2008.

Speaker Pelosi is having a heck of a time finding a way to answer that age old question 'What did you know and when did you know it?' regarding her CIA briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques. She's dangerously close to becoming a target of her own party's proposed "truth commission".

Even the mainstream media can no longer ignore the fact that the Democrats are having major difficulties governing the way they promised they would. The drumbeat that once was "the Republican party is dying" is now starting to sound like that powerful horse making his move from the back of the pack. Just like Mine That Bird in the Derby, Republicans are finding their footing on a very muddy track.

One more parallel between horse races and elections: Those who know a lot about these things say that Mine That Bird has the speed of a distance runner not a sprinter - a quality that bodes well for a Triple Crown contender who needs to win the grueling one and a half mile Belmont in addition to the shorter Derby and Preakness. In a time when our country is under virtual single party rule, opposition candidates with solid ideas and practical policies might be the perfect alternative to pie-in-the-sky promisers and flustered fibbers.

Win or lose today, Mine That Bird has a lot of people questioning what they thought they knew. The same can be said of the current political climate.

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